Stop Gaslighting Your Inner Child

In my work, I often talk about what we do to our inner child is what was done to us in childhood. We
learn to parent our inner child, punish her/him, neglect, reject or abandon (if this is what was done to
us). Many of these experiences create codependency in adulthood. We do these things to our inner
child and then we look outside of ourselves to be saved FROM OURSELVES.

Oftentimes, this means we look to our partners, bosses, “false idols” for some type of permission slip
to love and own ourselves. Some type of permission slip or validation that allows us to be less hard
on ourselves and calm the inner critic. We become “dependent on undependable people.” They are
undependable, because they are not your inner guidance and do not know what is ultimately in
alignment for YOUR BEST INTEREST. Also, people change and so do their opinion’s.

Gaslighting the inner child is when we intellectualize our trauma, pain, and experiences. An example
of this is when we know that our father was treated poorly in childhood so that is why he treats us
poorly. We make it ok so that we can deal with it and know that the pain caused by him is not
personal. Only this does not work. This is a form of gaslighting the inner child and doing a bypass.
We mentalize it, but that keeps our emotions stuck. The inner child was not able to “mentally
understand this.” This inner child emotionally imprinted this experience and now needs YOU to help
integrate the body and mind. We know this is happening when we are still getting triggered, having
shame come up and sometimes even sabotage our own joy.

Instead, we need to VALIDATE the childhood experience. “I felt unloved, I was neglected and did not
get my needs met.” Many of us feel guilty for even saying this. Like we are doing something wrong
by telling the truth of our own experiences. We must do this part, because it RECONNECTS us with
our inner child by melting those stuck emotions. In doing this, we reconnect with our own sense of
WHOLENESS, ENOUGHNESS & PURPOSE. By validating the unvalidated feelings, our stuck
emotions are able to mature through our own reparenting and we are able to bridge the gap between
our past childhood pain and our current adult reality. This is how we come into empowerment,
wholeness and SELF VALIDATION at the highest level. As a bonus, this will greatly help to balance
out any ROOT CHAKRA imbalances in the form of difficulty sleeping, constipation, weight changes,
fatigue, and lower body issues.

With love,

Candace Van Dell

Candace is a regular contributor to the #1 Online Magazine For Codependency, Codependency Recovery.

For help healing the inner child and rehabilitating the emotions, check out my 12-week Emotional
Rehab program. It is a game changer: https://emotionalrehab.candacevandell.com/